


for the hope of it all

by CassandraCaffrey



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Beach House, Everyone is Alive Except Georgie Denbrough, Light Angst, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-IT Chapter Two (2019), Running Away, Song: august (Taylor Swift), The Hammock (IT)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:47:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26175964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CassandraCaffrey/pseuds/CassandraCaffrey
Summary: Some might say it’s spontaneous and romantic to run away with your never-almost-not-quite middle school sweetheart after defeating a killer clown. Some might say it’s downright stupid and irresponsible.orRichie & Eddie run away to the coast together for a week, then two weeks, then a third,  and the author listened to August by Taylor Swift far too many times during the writing of this.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 4
Kudos: 66





	for the hope of it all

Pennywise is dead, the sun is high in the sky, and Eddie Kaspbrak’s thighs straddle Richie’s waist in the Derry townhouse. 

“Run away with me,” Richie pleads, breathlessly forcing the words out in the brief moments his mouth isn’t on Eddie’s mouth, shoulders, chest, skin. “Eddie, Eds, let’s get out of here. Let’s leave this fucking town.” 

Eddie doesn’t say yes but the way his fingers twine with Richie’s, palm to palm, holy palmer’s kiss, is agreement enough. 

xxx

Richie fills out theatres and Eddie has a big fancy job in a big fancy firm. Between them they easily cover the price of the house on the coast. 

“They have a hammock!” Richie exclaims as they lie in bed scrolling through properties on Eddie’s phone, still sticky-hot from breaking their friendship wide open, and Eddie immediately jabs his thumb at the screen to book. 

xxx

Richie insists on the top down of his fancy hired convertible in return for letting Eddie drive, and it’s worth it for the way the hairs on the very top of Eddie’s head curl in the wind. Playing shotgun means Richie also gets to choose the soundtrack, and he goes straight for the eighties playlists - he remembers clearly now, being thirteen and lying flat on his back in his bedroom, the record player spinning in the background as he tried and failed to think about girls instead of boys. 

“ _I hear you call my name_ ,” Richie sings, loudly and purposefully off-key as he drums on his knees, the way teenage Richie did. “ _And it feels like home!_ ”

Eddie joins in, word-perfect and smiling despite the wad of bandages across his left cheek. 

“I close my eyes!” They shout-sing in unison over the purr of the car, and Eddie places his hand on Richie’s thigh as if they’ve always been this way. 

_Oh, god,_ Richie thinks, heat rising in his throat, heart tight and fluttery in his chest, _I think I’m falling._

xxx

It doesn’t matter what the house is like, all that matters is that they’ve run away and nothing - nothing! - is going to touch them for the next week. In sync they send off rehearsed texts to Richie’s manager, Eddie’s wife and boss, and immediately switch their cells off. 

“Going off grid with a married man! Hot.” 

“Shut up and kiss me already,” Eddie says, and Richie gleefully complies. 

xxx

They christian every room in the house, one by one, and Richie maps Eddie’s body until he can follow every path in the dark. He learns what Eddie likes and fine-tunes until he can have Eddie panting and strung-out in a matter of minutes; Eddie must be doing likewise because the sex keeps getting impossibly better. 

They’re jammed together in the hammock and watching the sun set in streaks of purple sky when Eddie says quietly, “how about another week?” 

Richie tilts his head back. It’s his turn to sit squished between Eddie’s bare thighs, one hand curled around Eddie’s ankle and the other around a plastic cup of fancy wine Eddie picked out from the local liquor store. 

“You joking with me?”

“I’m serious,” Eddie says, and Richie’s not going to argue from his upside-down perspective with the set of Eddie’s jaw. “You, me, more of this.” 

They’ve talked a little about their adult lives but they haven’t talked about what’s going to happen when they go back to them. 

Eddie hasn’t said what he’s going to do about the wedding ring he took off and placed in the same drawer as their cellphones. 

Richie’s tried not to think about his abandoned tour dates or his empty apartment on the opposite coast of the States.

“Sounds like a fucking plan,” Richie agrees, and when he tries to sit up straighter to kiss Eddie and accidentally knocks the two of them off-balance to the grass, he knows he’s made the right call. 

xxx

At the end of the second week, Eddie calls the house owner and books another seven days. 

xxx

Sixteen days, and now Eddie always tastes like salt air. 

xxx

Eighteen days in, and the words which have been on the tip of Richie’s tongue since Eddie first kissed him in the Derry townhouse slip out. 

“I love you” would have been fine. “I love you” is what he’d said to Eddie after they escaped Neibolt, what he’d said to all the Losers as they shakily embraced in the waters of the quarry. Richie’s loved Eddie Kaspbrak as long as he’s known him and Eddie’s loved him back just as long.

No, what Richie says when Eddie takes off his bandages to reveal how, against all odds, his cheek wound is healing into a relatively neat scar, is “Why don’t we just stay here forever, Eddie? Just… you and me. Together.”

Eddie stares at him for a long moment, bandages clutched in hand. A little too long. 

“I…” Eddie says, hesitates, and then shakes his head and re-enters the bathroom. 

It hurts more than the Deadlights. 

xxx

Richie runs.

He wants to jump in the car and slam the pedal on and _go_ , run from Eddie and the oceanfront house the way he’s already running from his life. Instead, he steals a pair of Eddie’s running shorts. The hems dig into his thighs as he finds his feet along the coast, inhaling salt air as his lungs burn.

When he finally returns, it’s growing dark and he’s ready to call it quits. Pack up and pick up the pieces. 

He nearly misses Eddie perched in the hammock in the dying sunlight.

“Hey,” Eddie says. 

“Hey,” Richie says. 

“So,” Eddie says, and scuffs his bare feet on the grass. 

“So,” Richie says. 

xxx

They tune to a radio station playing old soft rock on the drive to Bangor. Many of the songs are ones they know. They don’t sing along. 

xxx

Richie doesn’t manage to rebook his tour, but he does snatch up a gig as a local radio presenter. The hours are regular, the pay is fine, and it gives him an excuse to talk, talk, talk without a script. 

When he talks to Eddie, it’s through the Losers group chat. It’s polite. Calculated. 

Bill, Bev, Ben, Mike, and Stan all call him independently to ask what happened. Richie tells them it was a nice break, and it’s not going to happen again, and yes, Eddie and him are fine, and could they drop it already? 

xxx

There’s a guy who runs the coffee shop next to the radio station. Smart and funny, not a fan of Richie’s stand-up, but likes his radio show. Serves Richie an almond croissant and mocha and maybe-accidentally-on-purpose hikes his pantleg up to reveal rainbow socks as he heads back to the counter. 

Richie leaves his phone number on a napkin, because the guy is cute and Richie is single, and Richie hopes the guy doesn’t call. 

xxx

Eddie announces his separation in the Losers group chat. 

xxx

The Losers reunite at Ben and Bev’s home, which is big and beautiful and spacious enough for all of them and their significant others. 

“Lonely,” Ben called it once. 

“Lonely,” is what Richie says to Eddie, having dragged him away from the others. “Eds, I’m so fucking lonely, and I know - I know what we said last year, but I need to know if you’ve changed your mind, cause I haven’t and I still want you, and I’ll change my life for you, I’ll do whatever you fucking want-” 

“Thank fucking god,” Eddie interrupts, grasping the collar of Richie’s shirt and shutting him up as he tugs him close, “because leaving was the biggest mistake of my life, and that’s saying a fucking lot.”

“Eds,” Richie says weakly. “You’re the love of my life.” 

“Shut up and kiss me,” Eddie suggests, and Richie does. 

Somehow, impossibly, he still tastes of salt air.


End file.
